Google: It Takes Time To Rank A Great Website On Google

In an online discussion, Google's John Mueller said that having a great website is not enough to get high rankings on Google. What do you need to get high Google rankings and what do you have to do?

High rankings take time

If you have a new website, it will take some time until Google fully trusts your site. Even if your website has great content, Google must be sure that your website can be trusted. 

This is what John Mueller wrote in the discussion forum:

"From what I can tell, your site is still fairly new - with most of the content just a few months old, is that correct? In cases like that, it can take a bit of time for search engines to catch up with your content, and to learn to treat it appropriately. It's one thing to have a fantastic website, but search engines generally need a bit more to be able to confirm that, and to rank your site - your content - appropriately."

If your website is several months old, it is still new to Google and Google needs other factors that confirm that your website is great. For example, the number and the quality of the links that point to your website will help your website to get higher rankings.

Automatically created backlinks don't help your website

Many webmasters think that they can get higher rankings on Google by artificially increasing the number of website backlinks through bulk link submitters.

While these tactics did work for some time, Google's Penguin update made sure that this type of link can get your website into trouble. John Mueller strongly recommends to avoid these links:

"If you're engaging in techniques like comment spam, forum profile link-dropping, dropping links in unrelated articles, or just placing it on random websites, then those would be things I'd strongly recommend stopping and cleaning up if you can."

You won't get high rankings on Google if you use spamming tools to promote your website. If you want to get high rankings that last, optimize the content of your web pages to show that your website is relevant to your keywords.

Then make sure that high quality websites link to your site. If you do these things in that order, your website will get high rankings on Google in the shortest possible time. In addition, your rankings will last because they are spam-free.

How To Get High Local Rankings

40 local search marketers around the world participated in a survey to find the most important ranking factors for local search. If you want to get high rankings in Google's local search results the survey can help you.

Why is it important to get good local rankings?

For some keywords (for example "seo ananlysis"), Google shows local results at the top of the search result list. These websites aren't listed at the top because they have good content or good backlinks.

They are listed at the top because they fit to the geographic area of the search query. If keywords that show local results are relevant to your business, it is important to be listed in the local search results.

The five most important factors for local results

According to the survey, the following five factors are the most important factors that influence the overall ranking of a website in Google's local results:

1. The physical address in the city of search
2. Proper category association
3. The proximity of the address to centroid
4. The domain authority of the website
5. The quantity of structured citations on Internet yellow pages websites and data aggregators

It also helps to have the city and the state on the landing page.

The top five factors that have a negative influence on your local rankings

The following factors can have a negative influence on your local rankings:

1. A mis-match of phone numbers across data ecosystems. For example, tracking phone numbers can negatively affect your local rankings.
2. Multiple Google Place pages with the same phone number.
3. Multiple Google Places pages with the same or similar business title and address.
4. A mis-match of the address and/or the phone number on Google Places and the landing page.
5. Including location keywords in categories.

If your website doesn't have a crawlable version of your name, address and phone number on the landing pages, Google might not also give your website high rankings.

Getting high rankings on Google is important if you want to get more customers and more sales. 

An Introduction To SEO Infographic

A basic info-graphic on an introduction to SEO basics

You and I know what they say, A picture is worth a thousand words right?

So today I am not going to talk about SEO or write an article about it. I am sharing with you an info-graphic about what SEO is and basically how it compares to other forms of Search Engine Marketing.

SEO Infographic